Fri 18 Feb – De La Soul

“IF YOU WANT HIPHOP TO COME BACK TOP THE TIVOLI, PLEASE RESPECT OUR VENUE!” reads a sign attached to walls throughout the theatre. It’s a curious request. The Tivoli rarely hosts hip-hop shows; perhaps their toilets have been bombed by graf artists in the past. When you consider who’s headlining tonight’s show, though, the plea for good behaviour makes even less sense.

De La Soul are known for bringing nothing but good vibes to the stage, and to hip-hop in general. They’re old hands; they’re well-versed in addressing crowds and provoking a response.…

Thu 17 Feb – Black Mountain

On the first eve of their four-date Australian tour, Black Mountain sound tired.

Despite the high drama they evoke in their flighty treks of psychedelic-tinged swamp-rock, there’s a surprising absence of charisma on stage. Bar drummer Josh Wells, the five-piece offer minimal energy to the task at hand, and their seemingly apathetic attitudes are mirrored by the audience. At first, this is jarring. The mood is more funereal than party. Plainly, it sucks to see bands like this. We watch these people perform incredibly feats of musicianship, which they pull off with apparent ease;…

Fri 4 Feb – St. Jerome's Laneway Festival 2011 - Brisbane

Having missed Laneway 2010, it’s something of a shock to take in the size of the festival site at first. The space on offer has grown considerably since 2009, thanks largely to a bigger stage (New Alexandria Street) that’d be more suited to a grassy field somewhere than a slab of bitumen baking under the relentless sun.

As the festival begins, we’re subject to weather that seems so uncharacteristically Queensland of late: pure, unfiltered sunshine, which infiltrates the skin and immediately begins cooking. Thankfully there’s shade over where Rat…

Wed 26 Jan – Mos Def, 2 Dogs, Seven w/ Crate Creeps

Despite all the controversy surrounding this tour – unexplained absences, a no-show in Adelaide, frequent shuffling of tour dates – the man known as Mos Def clearly has a sense of humour about it all. Like a child who know he’s in trouble, but can’t resist tossing another stone, the American rapper appears 20 minutes after his scheduled start time, singing a line about “Better late than never”, over and over. And the crowd loves him for it. Think about the shit any of us would cop, were…

Mon 24 Jan – Tool, Jakob

First, a confession: I am guilty of taking Tool too seriously. Throughout my adolescence, they were my one and only; my idea of modern music’s apex. I took the ride, I swallowed the pill. I bought the shirts. I’ve listened to Tool’s music more than that of any other band. Theirs was the first proper live show I saw, in 2002, aged 14. It blew my tiny mind.

So it’s with a continuous sense of melancholy that I look upon tonight’s proceedings, and with fresh eyes and broader musical experiences, realise that there’s not…

Sun 23 Jan – Big Day Out 2011

For the full review and photos, click here to visit The Vine. It's better reading it there than here. Promise.

It’s with no small amount of disappointment that the time we should have spent watching Gold Coast indie punk duo Bleeding Knees Club open the Boiler Room, and New Zealand electro-rock act The Naked and Famous open the Converse Essential Stage, is instead spent sitting on a bus. We’re just one vehicle amongst thousands caught in a tedious traffic jam caused by a two-car accident somewhere between Brisbane and the Gold Coast…

Wed 5 Jan – Sunset Sounds 2011

We left the first day of this two-day festival wondering how they were going to remedy the state of the grounds. The answer, it appears, is sand. Within 15 minutes of the gates opening, a fine layer of topsoil is already being ground into mush by the hordes venturing up and down the hill, thereby rendering the groundskeepers’ hasty decisions fairly moot. By the time gates shut tonight, pretty much every square inch of grass within the venue is gone. Woodchips were in short supply? Beforehand, we’d checked BOM’s weather radar online; when…

Wed 5 Jan – Sunset Sounds 2011

Queensland's version of The Falls Festival, Sunset Sounds, runs for two days. Both events share similar line-ups, but here, the curfew is 10pm and there's no camping. Held at Brisbane’s Botanical Gardens, three stages run concurrently in a space roughly half the size of the Parklife Festival held in September.

I arrive as gates open at 3pm, and there's a few hundred metres-long queue snaking toward the main entrance. I'm about to detour to the second entrance when, amid dozens of people streaming through the gardens’ gates, I'm stopped by a man in…

Sun 2 Jan – Built to Spill, Bearhug

Guitar heroes come in many forms. The Jimmy Page model of flowing locks, exaggerated facial expressions, and half-unbuttoned shirts. The James Hetfield model of goatee, tattoos, sleeveless black shirts, and snarling confidence. The Eric Clapton model of bespectacled grace and deft touch. Doug Martsch of Built To Spill plainly couldn’t give a fuck about any of these models. The man dresses how he pleases, and makes absolutely no attempt to build rapport with the audience. The space between each song is filled with awkward silence, while the band leader thoroughly dries his…

Sun 19 Dec – Gorillaz, De La Soul, Little Dragon

To turn a once-virtual band into a very real one is no small decision. First conceived as a quartet of animated characters by Blur singer/songwriter Damon Albarn and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett back in 1998, the current incarnation of Gorillaz performs live under a projector - as opposed to an earlier setup, where the players were obscured behind a screen. And from the 'Orchestral Intro', one thing is clear: nothing is being done by half.

At first, an eight-piece, all-female string section files onto stage. They're joined by the six-piece Hypnotic…